Allow uploading or linking to videos as crag / route resources like photos

[cgome]

A video like

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hv8jmEg2SrE

Should also be linked to/listed/available as a resource on http://www.thecrag.com/climbing/australia/coles-bay/route/13658107

I'd see it basically the same as a photo:

• users can upload (or maybe just link to via URL) videos to any route or other node
• change 'photos' tab to 'Photos/Videos' or 'Resources' with a camera icon
• videos appear elsewhere on the site wherever photos do- click to expand and play.
• earn karma for uploading or linking to new videos

[scd]

are you suggesting we should have a more structured way to upload/link videos other than embedding?

[cgome]

I think so. I agreed with a earlier discussion about the fact that a video of so done climbing a route shouldn't be embedded in the description of that route. But I feel like we should be able to associate a video of a route with the other data and resources we hold for that route in some way. I would watch climbing videos both as a casual browsing kind of thing and also for beta / research.

On Sunday, 5 October 2014, Simon Dale notifications@github.com wrote:

are you suggesting we should have a more structured way to upload/link videos other than embedding?

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/theCrag/website/issues/1678#issuecomment-57927856.

Campbell

[cgome]

'so done' should be 'someone'

[brendanheywood]

+1 yeah these are the same from a users point of view. Would need to do a bit of live url checking at upload time to make sure the resource is valid etc. What would we do about resources that get taken down later? I guess we can auto flag it later if the oembed fails at display time, or someone could also flag it #1666

[scd]

I think there are a number of concepts here.

• [ ] store the embed links against the node rather then lost in the node descriptions. This will make easier management, navigation and searching. Fairly easy, but some secondary issues with managing links to content taken down.
• [ ] Do we want to use our site to get new content - ie actually upload the photo/video to our site, via the url. I think there are some ambiguous copyright issues here? I know we do it for topos.
• [ ] Do we want to start a library of videos on our site under our community copyright. Disk space issues and new code sets required, so does the benefits outweigh the extra work/costs.
• [ ] Do we want to use the YouTube api to upload videos at a node, but stored on our youtube channel:

https://developers.google.com/youtube/2.0/developers_guide_protocol_direct_uploading

The pros are that we build our own youtube channel with it's own subscribers. The cons are the YouTube license is limiting. Maybe people will not want to upload this way. Maybe youtube will allow a video to be associated with our youtube channel and a particular youtube user as well.

I cannot see any benefit of us having our own video library. If we could make it work, I think it would be cool to have a youtube channel with lot's of subscribers. There is revenue in this.

[brendanheywood]

I think we only store links. I don't want to do any hosting and serving, that's just a nightmare. I also don't think there will be much traction at all if people are expected to upload to our channel.

[scd]

the traction argument is probably a good one. I don't want to put work into something that will probably go nowhere.

To clarify, are we storing embed links to photo/video resources or links to anything? The data structure is probably the same for both use cases.

[brendanheywood]

Hmm, I was thinking we'd white list it to only resources that have a valid oembed that already works, so youtube, vimeo kind of things etc (probably further reduced to only video embeds, no flickr etc). We would want to grab the oembed metadata at save time and I think store that locally, eg fill in the defaults for the title.

I think there is very limited value in raw links that don't display a preview in any way, people will want to casually browse and see things. Links are boring.

Is this really a critical 'must be resolved'?

[scd]

I thought this was low hanging fruit with just a URL to add to the database. I think there is a lot more too it. I should store the last oembed returned data, and probably use the Nx starred schema so we can do a facet search on oembed videos.

Given all that, it is not a priority compared to some other stuff we are doing.

[scd]

I have started a sql table for this to test the build process on the new dev.

Note to self - have to enable some stuff in the FacetFields.pm file

[brendanheywood]

+1 from @rouletout via share

[lordyavin]

+1

[killakalle]

+1

Would consider also other Social Media sources, e.g. Instagram, Facebook. When I look at the climbing areas on theCrag in my area, there are not a lot of photos added by users. However, for the same areas a lot of people (not necessarily theCrag users) upload photos and videos to Instagram.

Having a convenient way to link crags and routes to photos and videos on other sites would be cool for contributors to enrich crag information.

A workaround I currently use is Markdown links in the route description

https://www.thecrag.com/en/climbing/spain/gandia/sector-el-boved-n

[killakalle]

Bumping this.

I have the impression that lots of people are meanwhile uploading ascent videos - especially for boulders - on Youtube and Instagram. But also occasionally on vimeo.

There is cleary a demand for beta videos as various dedicated websites show

• https://madboulder.org/about_us general beta video website with linked YouTube channel
• https://www.betacache.com/videos/ general beta video website with linked YouTube videos
• https://blocbusters.de/franken/ Local website for Frankenjura, Germany

[killakalle]

fyi 8a.nu has added the functionality to add beta videos to routes https://www.8a.nu/news/introducing-beta-videos-share-and-discover-climbing-beta